Today, many popular electronic devices, such as hand-held media players or portable electronic devices (“PEDs”), are battery powered and include various user interface components. Conventionally, such electronic devices include buttons, dials, or touchpads to control the media devices and to allow users to navigate through media assets, including, for example, music, speech, or other audio, movies, photographs, interactive art, text, and media resident on (or accessible through) the media devices, to select media assets to be played or displayed, and/or to set user preferences for use by the media devices. The functionality supported by such electronic devices is increasing even as these media devices continue to get smaller and more portable. Consequently, as such devices get smaller while supporting robust functionality, there are increasing difficulties in providing adequate user interfaces for the portable electronic devices.
Further, as users continue to rely more heavily on these devices for running media applications, battery life and reliability become increasingly important. As devices become smaller and more portable, however, battery size and capacity often also decreases, sometimes leaving users unable to use their media devices as often as they would like to.
Additionally, different portable electronic devices may include different interfaces and functional capabilities, and smaller devices do not always include the full functionality that their larger counterparts may offer. For example, while a smaller device may be more portable and lightweight than its larger counterpart, it may not have circuitry available capable of adjusting media playlists or creating new media playlists “on-the go”, while a larger and more complex device might have these and other capabilities not associated with the smaller device.
Systems and methods in accordance with the disclosed subject matter integrate multiple electronic devices to increase the functionality of these devices individually and to address the previously mentioned issues. The disclosed subject matter includes systems and methods that take advantage of the capabilities of individual electronic devices and among other things, address the battery life, interface and interactivity issues discussed above.